• 🏔️ Mountain Dew Goes Back to the Future
• 👅 NACS: Coke Previews New Flavors
• 🏪 Couche-Tard Ups Takeover Bid 
• 🐄 Lifeway’s Flavorful New Lineup
• 🤒 Safety Shot Rebrands to ‘Sure Shot’
• 💸 Keychain Locks In Hershey Investment

Consumers want more from energy drinks—hydration, focus, mood enhancement and muscle support. Manufacturers are responding with functional ingredients like ashwagandha, BCAAs, and natural caffeine to meet the growing demand for healthier options. Learn more

It might seem like the distant past, but a decade ago the idea of aluminum canned water meant a product that was almost always relegated to seltzer or flavored water.

Fast forward to 2024 and there are a multitude of reusable and tall cans of still and unflavored sparkling water that grace the shelves of beverage cold cases. Many of these brands have positioned themselves around a sustainability mission, preaching the more recyclable nature of aluminum over plastic.

With taglines like “Death to Plastic” or website imagery of oceans filled with plastic bottles, marketing around a more environmentally friendly container has become more widely accepted by both grocery buyers and consumers.

The strategy has been successful enough that strategics like The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo have jumped onboard with metal cans for their smartwater and Aquafina brands, respectively. Resealable aluminum beverages are even moving into other categories like Local Weather’s sports drink or energy drinks like C4 and Monster. 

Open Water was one of the early adopters of aluminum packaging in the bottled water category. The brand was also one of the first to make resealable aluminum bottles but has flown relatively under the radar in retail channels, instead focusing its business on foodservice accounts.

Thanks, in part, to brand efforts to trailblaze the category into convenience and grocery (think: Liquid Death, PATH and JUST Water), Open Water has successfully shifted into more retail locations. This year, the brand landed distribution deals with Whole Foods and Kroger as well as splashy partnerships at Chipotle and at the L.A. Clippers new Intuit Dome arena.

In light of consumers' acceptance of canned water, Open Water decided its 10-year anniversary would be a good opportunity to reintroduce itself and tell the story of its sustainability mission to customers.

The brand refreshed its packaging by bringing a bolder, cursive font to its name and adding two new “sticker” callouts. One is a slogan that reads “Make Waves. Bye, Bye Plastic!” and the other nods to its “Carbøn Neutral” credentials. Open Water decided to keep its oceanic label art which was targeted internally as a recognizable element to its identity.

“Choosing which brand of water you buy is this tiny, tiny change,” Open Water CEO and co-founder Nicole Doucet told BevNET. “On its own, it is so insignificant. But when you take millions and millions and millions of people making that choice together, it can change things significantly.”

Read about Open Water’s brand refresh on BevNET.

Mountain Dew is going back to its roots with its first rebrand in 15 years. New imagery focuses on the scenic Tennessee mountains that inspired the original brand in the 1940s and a return to full spelling, dropping the abbreviated “MTN” style it debuted in 2009.

🔎 Rebranded cans and bottles won’t hit stores until next year, but brand owner PepsiCo says the decision to embrace a new look came from consumer research findings.

🌄 Mountain Dew was founded in 1948 and has gone through at least six major design rebrands in that time, the first coming in 1969 – five years after PepsiCo acquired the business.

😎 That long legacy matters to the company: “[With] old brands, you have to give a lot of care and nurture to them because both brands and consumers change and consumers change,” said Mountain Dew VP of marketing JP Bittencourt. “We’re positioning Mountain Dew less away from a singular, individualistic orientation and into something more.”

BevNET Insiders can read the full story for additional insight into the rebrand.

BevNET’s annual “Best Of” Awards commend companies, brands, individuals, products, ideas and trends from across the ever-changing beverage industry landscape. The highly-anticipated awards show will take place in Marina del Rey, Calif., during BevNET Live Winter 2024 on December 8-10, 2024.

BevNET’s Best Of 2024 Awards are currently open for nominations and you may submit as many nominations as you’d like, either for your own company/product or a company/product you find deserving. 

The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, November 1.

Click here for more information and to submit a nomination. 

Thanks to innovative technology from industry leader Alland & Robert, Farbest Brands now offers Beyond Acacia®! This exclusive, easy-to-use gum acacia has high-density granules that help optimize beverage production – with benefits like improved solubility and high dispersion. Learn more

The Coca-Cola Company is cooking up some new innovations at the 2024 National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show in Las Vegas this week, including upcoming launches for its core CSD brands and Powerade. Here’s a sample of what the conglomerate has to offer consumers next year.

🫧 The flagship Coca-Cola brand is getting a new Orange Cream flavor in full calorie and Zero Sugar varieties, with rollout expected in Q1. Meanwhile, there’s new Sprite varieties in the pipeline: Sprite + Tea, launching in the Spring, which blends the lemon-lime soda flavor with iced tea to capitalize on a home-brewed social media trend.

🤸 In sports drinks, Powerade Xtra Sour is slated to debut next summer with Peach Pucker, Grape Shocker and Cherry Kicker flavors, building on a limited time run this year.

💻 Besides new products, Coke is also turning its innovation attention to the retail side, highlighting its Coca-Cola Lens data platform for retailers which launched in May.

Stay tuned to BevNET for continued coverage throughout NACS.

Alimentation Couche-Tard has tacked a few more billion onto its bid to buy Japanese retail giant Seven & i Holdings, upping the offer this week by 22% to about $47 billion, according to Reuters. 

💸 The new proposal comes in at $18.19 per share, Bloomberg reports; both parties have stated they intend to keep negotiations private. 

🏦 Seven & i rejected Couche-Tard’s initial offer claiming that it undervalued the company. Earlier this week, it was reported that the Japanese retail platform was considering selling off non-core assets to boost shareholder value and fend off a potential takeover. 

Lifeway Foods is adding 10 new “Flavor Fusions” to its 8 oz. organic kefir on-the-go line, embracing global ingredients like lychee, guava and ube as the dairy company looks to embrace modern consumer interest in experiential and “unexpected” innovations.

🍍 The full list additions includes Pink Dragon Fruit, Passionfruit Lychee, Hot Honey, Guava Jackfruit, Coconut Pineapple, Pistachio Rose Vanilla, Grapefruit Elderflower, Wild Blueberry Lavender, Taro Ube Latte and Matcha Latte.

💫 The rollout comes as the publicly traded company explores an acquisition by Danone SA, which put forward a $283 million offer last month.

💃 What they said: "These new trendy Flavor Fusions offer something for everyone and bring excitement to the kefir category, which is best known as a leading source for gut health, ‘better for you,’high-quality probiotics and bioavailable nutrients." – Julie Smolyansky, President and CEO of Lifeway Foods.

Safety Shot, a dietary supplement business that promises to reduce a consumer’s blood alcohol content, has rebranded as Sure Shot. The refresh includes a new 4 oz. bottle format and the launch of on-the-go powder sticks.

🏥  The original Safety Shot launched last year, although contrary to the name the drinks came in 12 oz. cans. The new 4 oz. format brings the product closer to a “shot” a consumers recognize the term while the refreshed branding adds more color to the packaging.

💥 Sure Shot worked with agency Amalgam and Stout Design on the new look, modeled after comic book art to promote the “dynamism and punch” the brand aims to provide, Amalgam founder Ned Wallroth said in a statement.

🍻 The brand is among the latest hangover prevention shot launches. Earlier this summer, competing shot brand ZBiotics closed a $12 million round as it sought to extend its hangover preventer into retail.

Tech company Keychain, which operates an AI-based platform that connects manufacturers with brands more efficiently, received a vote of confidence from The Hershey Company this week, announcing it has invested $2.5 million in the B2B matchmaker.

🤝 Founded by former Angi executives Oisin Hanrahan and Umang Dua, the company raised $18 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in late November.

🏭 Keychain has initially focused on bridging the gap for larger CPG companies and manufacturers and currently has over 10,000 brands and retailers on its platform.

💵 The company claims to have over $100 million in projects being posted on Keychain every month.

Stay tuned to learn how the investment will fuel keychain’s manufacturing efficiency goals.